The NYPD is making some big changes to its patrol guide for officers, and the police union is not about it.
In an internal memo, officers are being told not to "congregate" and avoid unnecessary conversation while at their posts. The new marching orders were handed down on Tuesday, after changes to the Police Patrol Guide were made to cut the small talk among fellow officers.
The memo also puts the responsibility on supervisors’ shoulders to make sure their officers are complying. In Times Square on Thursday, the number of police officers standing solo was noticeable.
Earlier this month during a Summer Streets bike ride, a reporter captured Mayor Eric Adams giving a police commander his two cents on how to position officers, seen in a video on Twitter telling the commander "they should not all be congregating together, OK?"
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Retired NYPD Chief Of Department Terrence Monahan said that while officers know they're not supposed to be talking and hanging around each other a lot, the changes seem unnecessary.
"Sergeants will go up and are constantly moving them, but it just seems like — another hour, another dart being thrown at the cops," Monahan said, adding that maybe Adams shouldn't worry about such small matters. "I don’t know if he should get that down in the dirt on some of these events that are going on."
The president of the police union agreed, saying it was overkill.
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"Pretty soon there won’t be enough cops left to congregate anywhere in the city, because these miserable working conditions and the low pay are forcing them to quit in droves," PBA President Pat Lynch said.
Monahan pointed out that the NYPD deploys thousands of officers to specific areas to monitor big events. He argued that that while yes, clusters of cops might spark chitchat, they also boost public safety.
"In a major detail, it's inevitable: cops are going to congregate. We’ve seen, because of past terrorist events, that we have to have a lot of police officers at a lot of these major events to prevent something from happening," he said.
